Just because

Cap'n Stu didn't know.

Sailing the Caribbean, the Frugal Way

Here is an interesting opportunity. Click on the title if you haven't already read this on the NYT.

Nosferatu or My Close Encounter with the Vampire

Keeping with the Halloween theme of trick or treats, monsters, scary things and all that, I offer the following true story. Somehow, Vanessa and I have become interested in Dracula and vampires. Suddenly vampires are everywhere in the media, Twilight etc., so why not? We both read a book titled ‘The Historian’ several months ago which was a modern Vlad the Impaler / Vampire story. We decided to get to the source and read Bram Stoker’s Dracula over the Halloween season. Being a slower than average reader I got a jump start on her by going to the library and knocking off the first 50 pages before announcing to her that I had begun. She quickly finished off the 700 page book she was reading and picked up a copy of Dracula for herself. O.K., it wasn’t meant to be a race anyway and besides, with the World Series going on I wasn’t about to devote full attention to reading the book. Of course she finished it way before I did, so I’m slow already, but that’s besides the point. If you have ever read the book then you know that it is written in a diary / journal / letter fashion by the different main characters and so the reader experiences the story as a dated historical account.

Oct 26
Went to the library, took out Dracula, read 1st 50 pages. Jonathan Harker visits Count D at the castle in the Carpathians, Transylvania. Mina, fiancee, stays in London. JH cuts himself shaving, trouble begins.

Oct 27
Read another few chapters. JH loses more blood but eventually escapes castle. Drac sails for London.

Oct 28
I decide to cheat a little. Watched DVD of Dracula by Coppola. Phillies clobber Yanks in opening of series.

Oct 29
My friend Gary is going to arrive tonight with his 2 kids & stay through the weekend. I Spend most of the day cleaning house. How did the house get so filthy? Reminds me of descriptions of Dracs’s castle. 300 years without a vacuum cleaner. I stash a lot of things ‘out of sight’ into the closet where Buddy’s litter box is kept (note to reader: this is significant to the story). Yanks beat Phils, tie series.

Oct 30
Gary & kids go to Sea World. I pass & read about Renfield the bug-eater and juicy Lucy. After dinner we all play video games, Lego Batman, scary!

Oct 31
Gary & kids visit friends while I go sailing with Dave & Alistair… monster boat (Dogzilla) & monster fish (whales). In PM I go trick or treating with G & kids. Afterwards, amongst other characters, the devil and a vampire come to my door and demand candy or else! Yanks win again.

Nov 1
Gary & kids drive home to Vegas. Read a couple chapts. Telegraph Dr. Van Helsing…. bring garlic. Tonight I watched the film Vampyr (1931) by Carl Dreyer. Creepy scary. It is on the list of 100 greatest foreign films. I am trying to see as many films on this list as I can so watching it satisfies the checklist. Good old fashioned stake through the heart finishes off the vampyr. Yankees win again, playing like vampire killers.

Nov 2
Lots of cat screaming coming from the kitchen this morning as Jake, the large cat that lives next door, has let himself in through the ‘cat door’ of the screen door in the kitchen. Jake is helping himself to Buddy’s food. I run in and chase him outside. They never fight but Jake is the local cat bully. Today is Vanessa’s birthday. I baked a cake from scratch. No kidding. Chocolate almond cake. Reine De Saba, page 677, Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Birthday party, no reading. Phillies win.

Nov3
Last night Vanessa told me that she was almost finished with the book. I need to get serious. Dracula… he’s a man, a bat, a wolf, a rat, a mist, a fog. Just about anything he wants to be. And he commands wild animals. He has long distance hypnotic powers. He can call to his victims telepathically. He has legions of vampires all over the world. He has a ton of gold. He has the strength of twenty men. And long white teeth, red eyes. He probably has bad breath. He fears garlic. Sleeps in dirt.

Nov 4
Renfield is murdered in the asylum by Count D. He clues in Drs. Seward & Van Helsing just before he dies. Spills the beans on Dracula. Finally the anti-vampire justice league is getting the picture. Drac. realizes that the good guys mean business so he high tails it back to Transylvania by ship. He can control the wind so that the ship has a strong favorable breeze all the way from London to the Black Sea. With this ability he would be a very valuable crew on a racing sailboat if he could just keep his blood thing under control. But he wouldn’t be The Count if that were so. Yankees win world series. An odd discovery… tonight is garbage night, early tomorrow morning is collection… when I went in to the closet to clean Buddy’s litter box I notice that it hasn’t been used. Is he bothered that the closet is now crowded with stuff and limiting his space? He mostly goes outdoors but still he usually uses his box some of the time. Note to self, I better clean out the closet and give him more space.

Nov 5
I’m about ¾ through the book now. O.K., I get it. This is your basic “Boy meets Vampire, Boy loses Vampire, Boy gets Vampire story.” It’s the Jonathan Harker story, an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill, from a vampire. So, Jonathan is just a London working stiff. His girlfriend, Mina, a stenographer, happens to be BFF with Lucy, an aristocratic Londoner. Lucy, is wooed (after 40 years I finally get to use that word, thank you 7th grade English teacher of Victorian Era literature) by (1) Dr. Seward, psychotherapist & early blood transfusion pioneer, (2) Quincy, a Texan oil billionaire, (3) Lord Goldalming, a leading Englishman of impeccable breeding. Johnny gets sick ‘on the job’ but I doubt that his professional health benefits cover anything like his condition (fortunately for John, he steals a fist-full of gold coins from Drac’s castle while Drac is sleeping). While recovering, John and Mina get hitched (Quincy’s term) in Buda-Phest (an old school, sexy spelling of Budapest). Lucy, the BFF, gets bitten in London. Dr. Van Helsing of Amsterdam, world renowned specialist of mysterious diseases gets called in. Lucy gets big time medical attention including a blood transfusion from Van Helsing himself (good thing she is rich). Wreaths of garlic are flown in FedEx. Still, she dies (becomes undead). The team, working 24/7, hunt her down in the family crypt and draw straws to see who gets to drive the stake through her heart. Lord G wins the honor. Lucy spared eternal undeath.
Next, Mina gets bitten. The team works night and day, from London to Translyvania, securing medical equipment, train passage, hotels, meals, boat rental, weapons purchase, horse and carriage leasing, regular telegram communications, horse team purchases and theft, bribery of officials, breaking & entering private property, destruction of private property, committing assault, committing murder for Mina’s welfare. She lives. Cured forever. Cost? Priceless! Europeans have fabulous healthcare.

Nov 6
Getting close to finishing the book. When I read by myself at night it can be a little bit scary. Tonight a small moth landed on my face while I was reading and I was so surprised that I threw the book. It is a moth you fool, not a bat!

Nov 7
Bizarre night. Animals are so much better attuned to their environment than we humans are. At least their senses of hearing and smelling are. Buddy is suddenly excited in the living room. He is focused on the fireplace, specifically inside the fireplace behind the screen. I can’t see a thing. I think he is just being a weird cat as all cats sometimes are. The next thing I know Buddy has lunged through the screen and into the fireplace caught a small rat that has climbed down the chimney. OMG! To my knowledge we have never had an animal invasion before, besides bugs, and I am kind of shocked to have a rat in the house. Buddy, being a cat, wants to play with it. The rat starts running, seeking hiding places, and running again. I grab the fireplace shovel and chase the rat through the hall and hit it (being careful not to hit Buddy). I take it outside to the garbage and think about how weird that event was. And then it dawns on me, the rat & Dracula connection. Is this a mysterious co-incidence or just another of a million rat invasions into the urban / sub-urban living space?
Looked up & bookmarked Van Helsing’s website just in case.

Nov 8
I went bird watching this morning. Nothing of great note to report. Somebody reported a possible
Grey-cheeked Thrush late yesterday which would be a very interesting bird for us. About twenty birders
showed up looking for it but only Hermit Thrushes (common) were found.

I actually cut myself shaving today. Fiction, reality, what?

Nov 9
This morning Buddy has left a ‘present’ on the stone tiles at the front door entryway. Nice. I guess he is still not using his litter box. O.K., I’ll take care of that closet today. The trash can in the kitchen has been knocked over and there is trash all over the kitchen floor. Well, there is a good morning to you. After cleaning up the morning messes and having some coffee I sit down to finally finish the book. Dracula is slain and all who have been bitten are now free of the vampire poison. I return the book to the library and take out a DVD, Nosferatu (1922) directed by German film-maker F.W. Murnau. It is also on the foreign films top 100 list. I call Vanessa to watch it with me but she has other plans tonight. We make a Nosferatu screening plan for tomorrow. Buddy is a little bit noisy after I go to bed. Just as I am about to tell him to quiet down he apparently anticipates me and there is quiet.

Nov 10
Another present this morning. This time on the kitchen floor. And again the garbage can had been knocked over with trash strewn all over the kitchen floor. Did somebody leave some tuna in the garbage? Whatever.
Vanessa and I watched Nosferatu tonight. This vampire, called Count Orloff, is extra creepy. He has very long crooked fingers and very long pointy teeth. It is a silent film which adds to the spookiness somehow.

O.K., we are done with vampires. We agree we have had enough, maybe we have even over done it with the subject. “Although there is the movie ‘Shadow of the Vampire’,” Vanessa suggests. There must be a hundred vampire movies but I’ve had enough says I and I drove her home.

It is about 11:45 and I am tired, so it’s lights out and I go to bed. Again there is some noise going on as I am trying to fall asleep. I am too tired to be bothered. I am 95% asleep, almost dreaming, as Buddy jumps onto the bed with me. He rarely sleeps with me but sometimes he does. Then I hear an animal like drinking sound out of his water bowl. Moments later something has walked into my bedroom. It seems to be pretty large. It is dark. I can’t see anything. Buddy is frozen next to me. Whatever it is, it is too big for Buddy. An hour earlier I was laughing at soon-to-be victims hiding in their beds under the covers as the vampire approached. Now I am in the same predicament. I try to get my eyes adjusted to the near total darkness. I can’t see whatever it is but I can slightly hear it breathing. A vampire bat? A vampire wolf? Count Dracula himself? I launch out of bed and run into Kyle’s bedroom and slam the door shut. Kyle of course is still awake. I tell him that there is something in my bedroom. We both put on shoes, he grabs a baseball bat out of the garage and I get a broom. We bravely return to my room but there is no one there. We search but find nothing. The vampire must have transformed into mist and escaped through the window. And then we notice Buddy in the TV room. He is in the doorway pointing like a hunting dog. We slowly approach the room and there it is! Kyle called out, “it’s a possum.” Under the desk is a cowering rodent beast. It had apparently come into the house through the cat door a couple of days ago and like a vampire it has been sleeping during the day and then wandering the house at night eating cat food and garbage and pooping on the floor. It gives me the creeps to think it has been in the house for two nights and two days. Well, now what do we do? Kyle says, “remember that night at Uncle Dave’s house a couple of years ago? Well, we should do a barricade trap that leads it out like we did then.” “ That might not work for us because it is a long way to the door here” says I. Then Kyle says, “hold on a second. Move those chairs so that they lead to this doorway and I’ll be right back.” Kyle runs into the garage and comes back as NetMan! He has a big fishing net (twice as wide-mouthed as the crab net that we use) and so I use the broom to scoot the opossum toward him and Kyle just scoops the vampire-beast up. We take it out the front door and release it on the front yard. “Away to Transylvania with you” I called out. I wish I could say that it turned into a bat or a coyote but it just ran off in that kind of slow waddling style that opossums do. No blood lost by anyone.

The trimaran also known as

Dogzilla! It's enormous, fast & very scary when it is coming at you.

Trick or Treat

October 31, Halloween, the day you're supposed to don a costume and make the rounds. So Ross and I (in the company of a friend named Alistair) put on our sailing costumes (in my case at least, that would be whatever happened to be handy when I got out of bed, plus a Sunfish cap), hopped on a boat, and went tricking out into the Pacific.

What treats we got!

First, the day was beautiful for sailing — temperature in the 70s, wind 12–15 knots, and never a cloud in the sky. Regrets to all of you for whom winter has set in.

When we cleared Point Loma and had headed five or so miles out into the Pacific, Ross looked back toward Point Loma and saw a big thing. It was too far away to make out in detail, but it was two or three times as tall as sailboats in its vicinity. Ross hazarded a guess — could it be the boat BMW Oracle is developing for the upcoming America's Cup?

Indeed it was. If you're not following recent America's Cup doings, this boat is a trimaran that is 90 feet long and 90 feet wide, with a mast 185 feet tall. (Check it out at bmworacleracing.com) To give an idea of how fast it goes, we'd spent an hour and a quarter sailing our five miles out to sea. Without trying very hard (no headsail, for instance), the Oracle boat covered the same distance in 10 or 15 minutes. It sails with a small fleet of support boats, not to mention gawkers (like us) who try to get a close look.

For whatever reason, it would sail a bit, then stop and make adjustments to things. It appears to have a canting mast — when the boat heels, the sailors tilt its mast to windward so that it remains vertical and has a better aspect to the wind — and we thought they might be making repairs or adjustments to that mechanism. Its stopping gave us the opportunity to catch it; we would get quite close, only to watch it sail away again.

Finally, it sailed off downwind of us, and although it still wasn't trying very hard, it was moving at a speed well in excess of anything we could do. So we went our own way, off to windward. Then, miles away, it turned around to sail close-hauled. Now apparently really trying, it approached us so nearly that we thought we observed it to slow a little at one point to be sure it wasn't going to run us down. Then it zoomed by, not only its windward outrigger but also its main hull out of the water, balanced entirely on its leeward outrigger. It passed us, and minutes later it was on the horizon.

I work for Oracle; I wonder if I could get Larry Ellison to take me out for a sail?

By now, we were the only boat in our patch of the ocean, ten miles or so out to sea. Suddenly, Alistair exclaimed that he saw a spout. Then, looking about in reaction to Alistair's exclamation, I briefly saw a dorsal fin and a grey-black body. We turned downwind to follow, and soon found ourselves in a pod of whales — fin whales, we believe. There were at least twenty — maybe thirty. We saw spouts off in the distance, then spouts nearer to us, and then whales surfacing to breathe so close to us that we began to consider how to keep clear of them. Fin whales grow to be sixty or seventy feet — much larger than the grey whales we usually see in San Diego — and it's very hard to describe how impressive an animal that size is (particularly when your boat is about half that size). We were grinning like idiots with excitement.

Then, suddenly, they were gone. It was only then that each of us acknowledged recalling a story — just last week a boat was racing off the coast of Mexico and sank after having been rammed repeatedly by a whale. Good thing our whales were friendly....

All in all a better way to spend the day then asking for candy!